POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The Climate Action Summit in New York has failed to deliver
The world leaders who are responsible for emitting most of the greenhouse gases are not willing to take the requisite actions at the scale and pace that is required.
We are not on track for 2030 climate targets
We are at the halfway point of this time frame; if we review the current situation, the progress is not good.
Macron’s support for an ‘adaptation pact’ with Bangladesh
Macron first told us that he had had a one-on-one conversation with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina already in which he’d offered assistance from France to Bangladesh to work on an energy transition partnership.
Scale up climate change adaptation as soon as possible
While Bangladesh has been doing quite well in adapting to climate change, there is still a long way to go with not much time to waste. Serious actions need to be taken urgently to boost the country’s resilience.
In funding climate actions, we can be more creative
Leaders who attend COP28 will have to rise to the occasion with the sense of urgency that the climate change crisis requires today.
What our new climate envoy can do for Bangladesh
Last month the PM Sheikh Hasina appointed Saber Hossain Chowdhury, member of parliament, as her climate envoy.
Enter ‘global boiling’
“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”
We need a loss and damage report from the IPCC
A special report on loss and damage will capture the significant amount of scientific research being carried out now on different aspects of tackling climate change.
Collaborative research can be integral to climate action
The government of the United Kingdom has had a very cordial relationship with Bangladesh since our independence and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been a significant bilateral development partner for many years.
Loss and damage from natural disasters made worse by climate change
As Bangladesh assumes the leadership of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) for the next two years, including at the next Conference of Parties (COP26) to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, there is an opportunity for Bangladesh to push for the issue of loss and damage from climate change to be made a central topic for discussion at COP26. This is quite a politically sensitive issue that goes well beyond mitigation and adaptation, which have been the main focus of climate change conferences until now.
Dealing with the triple emergency
In the last few weeks, the world has been having to deal with the double emergency of the pandemic as well as climate change, while Bangladesh and West Bengal had to deal with a triple emergency, with super cyclone Amphan hitting us quite badly.
Bangladesh has an opportunity to be a world leader in climate change
The current Covid-19 pandemic emergency is combining with the climate change emergency as we speak, and as we tackle the first, we also need to tackle the second at the same time.
Holding the next global climate change talks
I had written in a previous column about the fact that the next Conference of Parties (COP26) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was to have been held in November 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland with the United Kingdom as COP26 President, had to be postponed to 2021 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
A renewed focus on social capital
One of the key revelations of the Covid-19 pandemic is that things that we held to be true in the past are now seen to have been myths, and as we transition from the old order into a new (and hopefully better) order going forward, we can build a better world by fixing much of what was wrong with the old world.
The double whammy of Covid-19 and climate change
One of the biggest lessons coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we are living in an interlinked world where no country can cut itself off for very long and no country can tackle the problem by itself. This lesson is even more true as we battle the double whammy of Covid-19 and the climate change.
Will Covid-19 change how we hold climate change talks?
As nearly the entire globe remains in lockdown and international travel is almost at a standstill, international meetings are being cancelled and often replaced by conference calls on Zoom and other online meeting platforms.
The old normal is ending
The Covid-19 pandemic is still having severe impacts on many countries and it is not at all clear how long it will take to play out globally.
Covid-19 and climate change
The Covid-19 pandemic is still making its way around the world and it will be some time before it is over. Nevertheless, even at this early stage, there are some lessons that can be drawn on regarding how best to be prepared to deal with the much bigger problem of climate change impacts which will be coming soon after.